Cold Spell

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I became certain Kai and I were meant to be when we were eleven and I knew what our wedding would look like.

It sounds silly, but dozens of other eleven-year-olds were also inexplicably planning their own weddings—it was practically an epidemic at our elementary school. They talked about reality shows involving dresses and bridesmaids and threw around terms like fit-and-flair and white bar. One girl in my class even bragged about having a seating chart in mind. But the fact that I didn’t know any of those terms and had far better things to think about than seating charts is what made me so certain that I was going to end up with Kai. Because, despite not knowing much about dresses or entrées, I knew that he would be there.

He was the only certainty.

I didn’t say anything to him, of course, but I didn’t need to. A few weeks later, after the seating-chart girl got in trouble for starting a fight over her choice of maid of honor, Kai looked at me and said, “Can we just get married in Las Vegas, like they do on TV?”

I nodded, thinking myself lucky that this was settled sooner rather than later. It wasn’t until I told my mom and she made a face that I realized it was a little odd, two eleven-year-olds shrugging with certainty over their wedding. I was embarrassed and wondered if I should talk it over with someone.

So I talked it over with Kai, until we decided to not care what the world thought. Vegas, limousines, and each other. That was all we needed.

It’s beautiful. For a moment, just as I’m crossing into Kentucky, the sun is cresting over the hills and I forget about Mora and her role in the snow’s presence. Chunks are falling from the trees, melting, though the promise of cold weather ahead remains. I wonder when I’ll hit the storm—how far her power reaches. I look down at Grandma Dalia’s cookbook, thinking about the mystery boy hidden in the back. Hidden away, as if she thought out of sight could render him out of mind.

It didn’t work, obviously. I guess you can’t forget love any more than you can forget the Snow Queen.

I have my phone plugged into the car charger; it’s been dead for ages. There are two messages on it from my mom, one asking if Dad will be driving me to school, the other asking if I took her yellow shirt. I text her no to both and wonder if Atlanta has finally thawed.

I make it till about noon before my eyes burn from exhaustion and I realize I have to sleep. I pull off the interstate and look at the collection of chain hotels that dot the exit. One looks decidedly less expensive than the rest, making it my immediate choice. Just as I’m about to turn into it, I realize a teen girl checking in alone will probably rouse some suspicion, if I’m even allowed to rent a room without being eighteen. I frown, park in a McDonald’s lot, and stare at the hotel’s entryway, trying to figure out how to work this.

Clearly, I’ll just have to lie about being seventeen. I lean into the backseat and grab hold of a coat Ella gave me, along with the red heels. I yank my hair into a ponytail, tugging a few pieces down around my face, then bite at my lips until they turn red and flushed. I slide off my tennis shoes, put on the heels, and step out of the car. I focus on the details—the way Ella walks, the way her smile goes from the center of her lips out, the way she lifts her chin when she’s asking a question. Details, focus on the details and hope they’re good enough to cover the lie.

It’s a miracle I don’t fall down immediately in these shoes. Luckily, the snow gives me better traction than the ice, though it still provides an excuse for being somewhat wobbly as I walk toward the hotel lobby. Automatic doors whiz open as I arrive, bathing me in heat. I keep my eyes ahead, on the front desk. The clerk behind the counter is young, with a poorly drawn fairy tattoo peeking out from underneath her sleeve. I smile as I walk over to her.

“I just need a room for the night,” I say, flashing a grin. “When’s checkout?”

“Noon. Let me see if we have anything, though… yep, looks good. Okay, ID, please?”

I make a show over looking in my wallet, frowning. “Huh. I must have left it at the bar last night when I got carded.”

“Sorry, I can’t—”

“I can pay cash,” I say, waving my hand at her as if our whole conversation is silly. “I’m not going back out in that storm. It’s crazy out there.”

The clerk looks at me for a moment, as if she isn’t certain. Her eyes fall from my face to my clothes, down to the red shoes. I can see her assessing me: I’m put together. Polished. Nonthreatening. And I’ve got a handful of bills that it doesn’t look as if I stole. She smiles and nods.

“All right—name?”

“Ginny Reynolds.” I give Lucas and Ella’s surname at the last instant—I don’t think my mom is looking for me, and certainly not in Kentucky, but still. I hand over a hundred dollars for the room and tell the clerk to keep the change. The clerk opens her mouth as if she intends to argue, but it’s purely for show. I can see her reflection in the elevator doors as I walk away; she pockets the entire amount. Just as well. I try not to be pleased with myself, but I can’t help grinning when I get into the elevator. I can’t wait to tell Kai this story someday, a thought I hold tightly in my mind so it doesn’t slip away to the memory of Mora taking his hand, of them running away together. To the thought of a future where Kai doesn’t care about me, much less my stories.

The hotel room is simple and clean, with abstract art on the walls and a white bedspread. I start the coffeemaker and turn the television on to some decorating show, the type of thing that’s better for background noise than entertainment value. The sound of traffic outside is muted by the air conditioner, making the room blissfully peaceful; I lie back on the bed and close my eyes. Only a few hours, I tell myself. Then you’re back to it. I fall asleep.

Outside the penthouse windows, the storm heightened, turning roads and buildings and trees into a milky-white wonderland. Mora closed her eyes and willed the snow to increase now that they were in for the evening; impressive as her powers were, they couldn’t help her car drive through feet of snow. It was best to find a place to stay, then bury the city in a blizzard, making whatever distance was between her and her pursuer impassable.

Pursuer. Ha. She was a child. Yet Mora was darkly impressed by Ginny, truth be told—she seemed so flimsy, so breakable back in Atlanta. Of course, all mortals looked flimsy to her now. Besides, she wasn’t afraid of Ginny—she was afraid of what might be following Ginny.

Relax, Mora told herself. The Fenris would probably devour Ginny before they could follow her to you. Self-control isn’t their strong point. Still, she worried. After taking so many precautions to keep the Fenris away, it was infuriating to think that a foolish mortal girl might lead them straight to her. She may have underestimated Ginny and her willpower, but she never, ever underestimated the Fenris.

“Shouldn’t we have taken Michael’s body?” Kai asked, his back propped against the headboard on the other side of the bed. Mora sighed, pulled the sheets up around her chest, and glared at Kai for ruining the mood. Larson was sitting in an armchair in front of a room service tray of untouched wine and strawberries. Perhaps I should have spent the evening with him instead, Mora thought, looking his way.

“Mora? Should we go back for his body?” Kai asked again, like a child pestering his parent. He looked over at her, found her hand under the blanket, and clasped it.

“No,” Mora finally answered. “Michael is gone. There’s no point.” Besides, she thought, maybe now I’ll just keep Edward. Typically, six guards was all she could manage—any more and they didn’t love her enough, weren’t devoted. Edward had always been tricky to control; his memories were strong, constantly trying to surge up and reclaim his mind—she never took him out on excursions like this for that reason. The challenge had always been part of his appeal, really.

“How did Larson and Michael learn to change like they did? To become wolves?” Kai asked, sliding down till his hair spilled across the white hotel pillows like blackened vines.

“How did you learn to breathe?” Mora answered. She pulled her hand from Kai’s, reaching onto the nightstand for her jewelry. “It just happens. All my guards can do it.” She met Larson’s eyes as she tilted her chin to put the chain of a sapphire necklace around her neck, and they smiled at each other.

“You make it happen?” Kai asked.

“In a manner of speaking,” Mora said. “I helped them become like me. Men like me become wolves.”

“Does that make them Fenris? The things that killed your sister?” There was caution in Kai’s voice now, fear, even.

“Not quite,” Mora said. “The Fenris are monsters. Horrible things, entirely soulless. But men like you, Kai, you become warriors. My protectors. You become beautiful, so much more beautiful than you’d ever have been as a mortal thing. Talented and fierce and loyal. Perfect.”

This seemed to satiate Kai; he stared at the ceiling, looking pleased. Mora always let her guards think they were her only salvation from the Fenris, and perhaps it was even true sometimes. But she’d escaped the Fenris all on her own the first time, another memory that was always affixed firmly in the forefront of her mind, reminding her she was stronger than them.

Even so, she was a Fenris once, a member of their pack. Back then, Mora couldn’t remember her life as an ocean girl, much less her life as a human. Then one day the boy from her past appeared. It was all by accident, of course, and he was older—almost gray. She hardly noticed the change in his hair color, though, just as he hardly noticed that she was pale, her eyes dark, her face beautiful in a dangerous, smooth way. He ran to her and kissed her the way he used to, and with his lips came the memories, rushing back through her, colliding with one another in her mind. Her life as a human girl, her life as an ocean girl, the realization of what she was now—

Mora closed her eyes and remembered how sweet his touch felt, how she was at home in his arms. She fought a certain memory, though, the one of seeing a ring on his finger, a solid gold band that bound him to another.

“What’s her name?” Mora asked. Her voice was strangled and not her own.

“Celia,” he said. “Her name is Celia. We have five boys and a baby on the way. You were gone. I waited, but you were gone, Madeline.”

Madeline. Her old name, her human name. In the ocean, she’d been Ry; as a human, she’d been Madeline, and now she was…

Now she was nothing.

“I would have waited,” she told him. “I would have waited forever.”

“It’s been twenty-three years,” he said, voice hard now, betrayed. “And you still look… you still look like you’re seventeen.” He seemed to realize this all of a sudden, looking down at his own hands to verify the wrinkles that were just starting to form around his knuckles. “Am I losing my mind? What’s going on?”

“I would have waited,” Mora said, mind reeling. It felt like waking up from a dream, only to find herself in a nightmare. “I loved you. I still love you.”

He choked on words and shook his head. “I love you, too. But I also love someone else now. I have a life. I don’t understand what’s happening, Madeline—”

“My name isn’t Madeline,” she said sharply. “Not anymore.”

She turned and ran. Away from him, away from the Fenris, into the arms of her ghost memories, remnants from her life as Madeline, as Ry. She went to the ocean to see if she could return home there, but the water tried to drown her. She went to her family’s home on Fifth Avenue to find it full of strangers. She went to her sister’s grave.

“How is it,” she mumbled to the gray headstone, “that you’re dead, and yet still the lucky one?”

Her current life was perhaps the strangest, this one that lurked between monstrous and perfect. Three lives, human, ocean girl, and this, forced together ever since the moment the boy kissed her. Three lives, three names. Too many for one girl, she thought, intertwining her fingers with Kai’s and leaning down to kiss him. He kissed her back hungrily, pulling her to his chest under the blankets.

“Tell me,” she whispered in his ear before biting it playfully. “What do you remember about your first life? Before I found you?”

“I remember…” Kai paused to think. “I remember a rooftop. I remember an old woman, and that our house was dark….” He shook his head. “Wait, is that real?”

“Who knows?” Mora said sweetly. “Here.” She stretched across him and tugged his violin case up onto the mattress. “Play me a song, darling?”

“What song?”

“Anything,” she said. “Do you remember any?”

“Maybe,” he said, removing the violin from the case. He fit it under his neck and dragged the bow across the strings. Mora winced as one squeaked loudly. That was the downside of changing them, turning them into something half-dark like herself. As their memories left, so did years of piano, violin, voice, or cello lessons. The raw talent remained, as did those few songs ingrained in their fingertips, but it was always a bit disappointing to hear them play so poorly compared with what they once were.

She relaxed as Kai found the notes, finally, then beckoned for Larson to come over. He obeyed, wrapping his arms around her just the way she taught him to. Mora closed her eyes and exhaled. They may lose their talent, but they’re mine, Mora told herself as Kai’s song continued, notes that made her heart feel long and tender. They’ll never love someone new. They’ll never leave me. She thought back to her sister’s grave, the way the acorns dug into her knees as she ran her fingers across the engraved death date.

In the hotel room, she looked outside at the storm-filled clouds and wondered if her sister could hear her. You weren’t the lucky one after all, Mora.